Medical imaging can be used as a clinical and diagnostic tool for assessing patients. Medical imaging techniques can reveal internal structures of a patient's body, often with minimal intrusion. The medical images generated can be used to diagnose and treat diseases, such as by identifying the presence of cancer in a patient. For example, mammography images of a patient's breast are frequently used to assess whether an individual is likely to have breast cancer.
Diagnosing the presence of diseases such as cancer can be difficult because individual physiology can vary from patient to patient. To identify changes in a patient's physiology, clinicians may compare images acquired from that patient over time. Comparing images acquired at different time may help a clinician recognize changes in a patient's physiology and assess whether a disease is present. This may assist the clinician in accurately diagnosing a patient's condition. This may also allow the clinician to monitor the efficacy of a treatment regime, and determine the proper course of treatment.
As medical imaging data increases in quality and resolution, the data size of medical imaging files increases. These files are often stored in centralized databases or remote archives that are accessible over a network. When a clinician is interested in reviewing past medical images, the medical imaging data is typically retrieved from the remote storage database and transmitted to a clinician workstation. As the size of medical images increases, the bandwidth required to transmit these images also increases. This can slow or delay a clinician's ability to review images, particularly if multiple images are to be reviewed such as a volume-based image series. Similarly, where a clinician screens a large number of patients using medical imaging data, this may reduce the number of patients they can assess each day.